Five one-hit wonders with a great catalog of other songs

1990s – MARCY PLAYGROUND – SEX AND CANDY

“Sex and Candy” dwarfed everything else Marcy Playground did. It was the second cut off of their debut album and it soared into the top 10 in 1997, becoming a fixture on FM radio. It was a laid-back, mellow jam, carving out different territory from their Minnesota brethren like The Replacements and Husker Du.

The rest of that debut album nibbled around those edges, getting a little sludgier on “Opium” or a little poppier on “Dog and His Master.” Anchored by the one big hit and another minor gem called “Saint Joe on the School Bus,” it has plenty of worthy pop songs.

They followed up the first album with Shapeshifter and no one seemed to care. It drifted away from the cool of “Sex and Candy” into more rock-tinged emo. They basically got swallowed up by too many similar bands, which is unfortunate because Shapeshifter has a lot to offer. “Pigeon Farm” should have been a single.

The poignant “America” is just a beautiful song. By the time MP3 arrived in 2004, frontman John Wozniak was writing harder-edge music which twenty years later, sounds like his best stuff, if also his least known. Marcy hasn’t released an album since 2009, and that was closer to a Wozniak solo effort.